The worst part of having excellent employees? Other companies want them, too. Discover proven methods to reduce employee turnover by using a recognition strategy.
Top talent is always in demand; without the right mix of company culture and workplace benefits, employees will find good reasons to leave your team and take a better offer elsewhere. Why is this a problem? Put simply, employee turnover is a financial drain. It disrupts projects and reduces productivity, not to mention the detrimental impact it can have on employee connection.
In this article, we break down the costs of employee turnover and outline ways to retain your best people. After all, attrition rates don’t have to be high. We explain how recognition can move the needle for your company.
What is the Financial Impact of Employee Turnover?
The cost of recruiting and replacing staff could be higher than you think. The Telegraph reports that the cost of replacing an employee is £30,614 on average, That includes logistics, like advertising and agency fees, as well as the time it takes for a new employee to bed in. The cost of replacing top-tier talent can be even higher, thanks to extended recruitment processes and complicated handovers.
According to Gallup, effective employee recognition can reduce employee turnover by 24% as part of a wider strategy. HR leaders and managers can improve turnover by ensuring teams feel valued for their day-to-day contributions.
A culture of recognition isn’t just for anniversaries and quarterly results. If employees feel appreciated for their daily achievements, they are more likely to remain loyal to your company.
Evidence shows that cultures of high performance are built through regular recognition. When we break down the numbers, employees who feel valued for their contributions tend to be more productive and engaged, driving a 21% uplift in business profitability. Imagine what your teams could achieve with the right recognition strategy in place.
What Causes Employee Turnover?
While the reasons behind staff turnover are complex and vary between industries, there are some commonalities. For example, a lack of appreciation or sense of “meaning” at work will often cause people to give up significant salaries to find something that makes them happy. Here are other common factors:
- Lack of recognition
- Communication problems
- Poor management
- Low salaries
- Understaffing
Industry specific reasons are more complicated. For example, many healthcare workers are leaving due to workplace stress and funding issues. However, there are ways to mitigate high turnover through recognition strategies that are customised for your company, industry and demographic.
Proven Methods to Reduce Employee Turnover
HR leaders need innovative ways to tackle employee turnover for the digital, hybrid age. When budgets are tight, it’s even harder to meet employee expectations, but that doesn’t mean you need to accept high turnover as inevitable.
Here are a few handy suggestions for cutting down on employee churn and making sure your best people feel like they’re in the best place for them.
1. Career Development
While many employees will be happy with a slow and gradual pathway to a higher position, your most dedicated team members are going to be looking for more. Don’t let top talent languish and grow frustrated, be sure to introduce a well-considered and impactful employee development plan.
Work with your best people to discover what their strengths and objectives are and how they align with your company’s goals, then invest in training, learning and mentoring opportunities. Not only will this help your employees grow, but it will also increase loyalty and make them more likely to stay. For example, according to Gallup, strength-based training can result in a 20-73% lower attrition rate.
2. Employee Engagement
Low employee engagement is one of the most powerful early indicators of future retention problems. When staff are struggling to feel connected to their colleagues, their work and the organisation as a whole, it’s only natural that they start to look elsewhere.
There are lots of ways to improve engagement, from focusing on improving employee wellbeing to introducing rewards. It’s smart to always be thinking about how to improve engagement overall, but be sure to also look out for the common signs of disengagement. That way you can intercede, make some changes, and hopefully help your best people reengage.
3. Build Connection and Belonging
Everyone wants to build a great culture – but how do you do that? It’s not as simple as hosting a pizza party at the end of each quarter. It has to start with building connection and belonging within your team, and ensuring that everyone feels valued.
To build connection, set up new rituals where you ask your colleagues to share things like their weekly wins, or who they’d like to shout out this week for their help. You could even give everyone a small reward allocation to share with a colleague whom they want to appreciate each month. Slowly but surely, this will help to build the foundation of a great culture.
4. Get Hybrid and Remote Work Right
Now that hybrid working is here to stay and more and more people are working remotely for at least part of the week, it’s worth putting time into ensuring it’s running smoothly. Keeping employees motivated and engaged doesn’t have to be difficult, but it is different when you’re not all based in the same space.
You can boost remote employee engagement by putting effort into ensuring that there are frequent check-ins and opportunities to have fun – without overloading people’s calendars. Building a thriving culture gives your top talent a good reason to stick with you, so it’s well worth the investment.
5. Offer True Flexibility and Adaptability
Alongside opportunities for hybrid working, be sure to also prioritise the kind of flexibility that can make life easier for everyone. The majority of people will have caring duties at some point in their life and allowing employees to be flexible goes a long way. A 2022 report from Velocity Smart Technology found that 47% of UK workers said they’d look for a new job if they weren’t offered some form of remote or flexible working.
Let your employees know that you value them as people and that you want them to be able to maintain a healthy work-life balance, by finding ways to work around everything from routine childcare to unexpected issues. Whether that’s through compressed hours, flexitime or job-sharing opportunities.
Show staff that their happiness and ability to juggle various commitments is important to you and they’re more likely to stick around.
6. Offer the Right Benefits
While some benefits appeal to the majority of people – plenty of holidays and a competitive salary, for example – there’s not always a one-size-fits-all solution. Some employees may be highly motivated by rewards or salary increases while others value professional opportunities for learning more.
The best way to make sure that you’re hanging on to the stuff you want to keep is to find out what makes them tick. You may not be able to offer even your best workers everything they’re dreaming of, but it’s possible that you could adapt some policies or tailor some benefits to suit your best people.
7. Show Respect, Recognition and Appreciation
One powerful way to encourage talent to stay with your organisation is to make sure they’re getting the sort of respect and appreciation they deserve. This means respecting their time and other commitments as well as being sure to communicate respectfully. Even the most conscious leaders can find this a little tricky, so brushing up on effective communication for leaders is always useful.
How Does a Recognition Strategy Help?
A holistic recognition strategy will provide your employees with regular appreciation, helping to motivate them to achieve more and drive up productivity. Recognition will also make your people feel valued, increasing their satisfaction levels at work.
Sharing appreciation for employee efforts is a proven way to keep your people happy. If you don’t regularly tell your top talent just how glad you are to have them as part of your team, then you run the risk of losing them to someone else. Why? Studies show that kudos has real impact, even more than financial incentivisation. Whether through regular appraisals, a rewards program or a powerful employee recognition platform, a strategy will help you reduce turnover.
Atlas Hotels Reduced Employee Turnover by 17%
You may not have heard of Atlas Hotels, but you’ve probably stayed in one of their hotels. They own fifty-eight hotels across the UK, including Holiday Inn Express, Holiday Inn and Hampton by Hilton brands.
Atlas Hotels has been a Mo customer since 2018. They were dealing with high employee turnover later compounded by the pandemic. Their company culture was struggling with an influx of new managers and a dilution of their shared values.
Our experts supported their HR leaders to build connection and trust across their teams through recognition, building a sense of shared achievement across office staff, hotel managers and shift workers. It was important to their managers that their recognition strategy didn’t feel too “corporate”. Accessibility was key. That’s why our Mo app suited their needs perfectly.
“When we do something celebratory, we love funnelling everything through Mo so everyone can see, and that’s a big part of bringing the culture at Atlas to life.”
Sarah Brocklebank Atlas’s HR Director
After introducing Mo to over nine hundred employees, Atlas Hotels registered a 17% reduction in attrition rates that they can directly trace to using our platform. Inspired by this story? It’s time to unlock the power of recognition in your company.
Transform your culture with Mo
Book a free demo to learn how Mo can help you:
- 🤝 Improve employee engagement scores
- 🚀 Reduce employee churn
- 😍 Build a collaborative culture
Mo is the Answer to Reducing Employee Turnover
Mo is a culture and engagement platform that uses data insights to drive real improvement in engagement scores while reducing staff turnover. We strategically help people teams create great places to work through continuous, positive action.
If you’re looking for ways to take action on measuring employee engagement, learn more about how to shift the dial at the manager level and transform insights into action. To find out if you’re eligible for our money-back guarantee, book a demo with our team.
